Smoking has several well-documented negative effects on your health, including increased risks for the development of lung and heart disease, as well as cancers of your lungs and esophagus. Perhaps less well-known is smoking's role in osteoporosis, a bone disease characterized by loss of calcium and bone density. Smoking increases your risks for developing osteoporosis, and may also delay healing in osteoporosis-related fractures.
Understanding Calcium Loss
If you have osteoporosis, calcium depletion makes your bones less dense, according to the American Academy of Family Physicians. As bone density decreases, your bones become increasingly fragile and your risks for bone fracture rise. In addition to fractures, potential effects of osteoporosis include lower back pain, height loss and abnormally severe spinal curvature. By the time these symptoms manifest, your level of calcium depletion is typically quite advanced. Since women have relatively low calcium intake, low bone mass and long lifespans, they have greater chances than men of developing osteoporosis. Hormonal changes after menopause also increase female bone loss.
Smoking Effects
There appears to be a direct link between smoking and the calcium-related bone loss of osteoporosis, according to the National Institutes of Health's Osteoporosis and Related Bone Diseases National Resource Center. Evidence for this link includes the high degree of bone loss found in older male and female smokers; poor healing of fractures in smokers; and the relatively high numbers of fracture healing complications that smokers experience. In addition, your risks for developing bone fractures in later life rise in direct relationship to the number of years you smoke, as well as the number of cigarettes you smoke. Women smokers also tend to experience menopause, and its associated osteoporosis risks, at a younger age than nonsmokers.
Considerations
Researchers have a difficult time gauging the precise effects of smoking on calcium depletion and osteoporosis, the National Institutes of Health note. The main reason for this difficulty is the common appearance of other osteoporosis risk factors in individuals who also smoke. Examples of these factors include poor diet, relatively high alcohol use, body thinness and lack of exercise or other physical activity. Even if you do not smoke, the presence of one or more of these factors may significantly increase your chances of developing osteoporosis.
Reducing Risk
If you smoke, quitting at any point in your life may lower your bone loss risks, the National Institutes of Health report. Be aware that your body may not recover normal bone health until several years after you quit. You can also improve your bone health by eating a diet that contains adequate amounts of calcium, as well as vitamin D, which promotes proper calcium absorption. Common healthy food sources of calcium include leafy greens and low-fat dairy products. Common vitamin D sources include saltwater fish and egg yolks.
Additional Effects
Smoking can also alter the effects of calcium channel blockers, a class of medications designed to treat heartbeat irregularities, chest pain and hypertension, the Texas Heart Institute reports. If you smoke while using any of these medications, you may trigger an abnormally rapid heartbeat, a condition also called tachycardia.
